Attractive, sturdy, unibody design - easily one of the better looking devices in this price bracket - build quality and materials are flagship-grade

Very good sAMOLED display, arguably the best in this price bracket - high resolution, good viewing angles, good colour reproduction - videos look excellent - and sunlight legibility is great too (on par with more expensive phones, and better than Samsung's own Galaxy J7 Max in this price bracket)

Decent performance in day-to-day use

Samsung's UI over Android is light, and works well - with some nice add-ons like social camera, and Samsung Pay

Good rear camera - pretty similar to the one on the very good J7 Max - making it one of the best cameras in this price bracket - and a good shooter even for low light situations

Very good audio output from both headphones, and loudspeaker

Very good battery life - among the best in this price bracket - will comfortably last the day even with heavy use

Fairly ergonomic too

Separate slots for Dual SIMs and SD card (instead of a hybrid slot)

Decent design and build quality (though it's plastic - would have been nice to see a metal or glass design)

Has a new, modern 'infinity edge' 18:9 AMOLED display, that stretches from edge-to-edge, and makes the device easy to use with one hand

The Samsung Experience UI skin on top of Android is a pretty decent skin and packs a lot of features - there’s Bixby, Face Recognition, which works fine and there are features like themes, game launcher, Samsung Pay mini, Samsung Cloud, games launcher, one handed mode and more

Decent dual camera setup on the rear - especially in proper lighting conditions, the camera takes good images, and low-light performance is not too bad either

Very good battery life - the big 3500 mAh battery, combined with the low power Snapdragon 450 processor and a 720p HD+ display gives you a recipe for some very good battery life - the phone comfortably lasts a whole day and if you use it judiciously, you can even make it last for two days

2-minute Review [Negatives]

If design, battery life and brand name are the main criteria then the Galaxy J7 Pro is a good choice, but it has some tough competition from the likes of OnePlus 3T (more powerful + more dependable camera), and Moto G5S Plus on the lower end (almost as good in all criteria, at a lower price)

Performance could certainly have been better, and while its good enough in daily use, it's not quite what you would call snappy, and it doesn't match up to its top competitors - so, if your only use case is casual social networkings, emails, videos - then the phone will do fine, else there will be better options in this price bracket

While the rear camera is pretty good, it does sometimes take too long to focus, and sometimes underexposes pictures, and that takes away from the dependability a little bit

Front camera is good too, but it is focused a bit too close, which can lead to blurry shots when the phone is held a bit far

No support for fast charging

No ambient light sensor, which is a big miss at this price point

Fingerprint & face recognition is on the slow side

While the display is pretty decent, it could have had better resolution

The display also has significant bezels, whereas a lot of modern phones with tall displays these days have very little bezels

Also lacks a notification LED

Average performance considering the price bracket, thanks to the budget Snapdragon 450 at the core, which is these days more commonly seen in phones under Rs 10k - while day to day performance is alright, but push the phone a bit and it will start to stutter - moreover, the Samsung Experience 9.0 has a ton of unnecessary and sluggish animations, that don't help

The dual rear camera setup is decent, but the portrait mode is pretty mediocre, with very ordinary edge detection - the blurring feels mostly unnatural

The speaker is both oddly placed (on the right side of the phone) and tiny and cracks at higher volume

No fast charging support

No compass

Uses the old micro-USB standard instead of a modern USB Type-C port

On the whole, the Samsung Galaxy J8 is hard to recommend - the likes of Redmi Note 5 Pro and ZenFone Max Pro bring faster processors, better displays and more premium designs, and now with the Poco F1 around the block, the J8 is an even harder sell